Is Avatar's Sex Scene Oscar-Worthy?

The critics agree: Avatar is a paragon of masterful visual effects,
cinematography and film editing. But what about the understated sex
scene? The Daily Beast's Asra Nomani is quite taken with it. She--or the Daily Beast editors--calls it "award-worthy." How come? She
says James Cameron's depiction of tantric sex was spot on.

In Avatar,
the sex scene took me back to the erotic Tantric sandstone temples I
visited almost a decade ago in the northern Indian village of
Khajuraho. Built by Hindu kings of the Chandel Empire from the 10th to
the 12th centuries, the most notorious of the temples have images of
divine, carnal acts carved around the highest points of their exterior
walls. For Tantric scholars and historians, the iconography celebrates
the highest possibility of sexual union, captured in the mating ritual
in Avatar.

Does the scene deserve high praise, and perhaps even an award? The cast of SNL have their own take on the scene: